


that thing you do

by trashmouthing



Category: IT - Stephen King, IT 2017
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-12 23:42:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14738007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashmouthing/pseuds/trashmouthing
Summary: and so he lets his admissions of love and lust land like punchlines





	that thing you do

**Author's Note:**

> hey i guess i just can’t stop writing about these losers? 
> 
>  
> 
> title is from a cheesy 90’s tom hanks romcom that i highly recommend

“Spaghetti Man is lookin’ delicious today, huh?” Richie Tozier nudges his best friend’s arm with his own elbow and nods his head toward where Eddie Kaspbrak is waiting in the lunch line with Beverly Marsh. His hair is slicked back perfectly, like it is every day, and he is wearing a plain pink t-shirt paired with some black shorts that, as far as Richie is concerned, should absolutely be fucking _outlawed,_ they make his legs look so good. Richie lets out a quiet, almost involuntarily whine when Eddie turns to ask Beverly a question, giving the other boy a full view of his ass. “Oh, he’s out for blood...” he groans, and Bill Denbrough rolls his eyes at the boy sitting beside him. 

“Are you ever g-g-gonna quit jerking around and ask him ou-out, Trashmouth?” he wonders cheekily, punching Richie’s bicep gently with half a smirk on his face when he sees him start to blush. “You’ve been dr-drooling over the kid since gra-grade school…” 

“I have _not!_ ” Richie shrieks, poking Bill in the chest, but his eyes are alight with mirth when Bill turns to shoot a pointed look in his direction. “Okay, so maybe I do have a bit of a soft spot for our little Eds,” he relents just as Ben Hanscom and Stanley Uris take their usual seats on either side of them, the latter sidling up as close to Bill as he can so that he can peck him sweetly on the cheek. Bill preens and turns into Stanley’s side, tucking his head into the crook of his boyfriend’s shoulder. “Aww, isn’t that adorable,” Richie coos, wiping away an imaginary tear from behind the lenses of his coke bottle glasses. “You two are so sweet, you’re givin’ me a toothache!”

“ _Christ,_ Tozier — get some new material,” Ben begs as he pops a few fries into his mouth. “We’ve heard that one about a hundred times since Bill and Stan started dating…”

“So!” 

“It’s only been two weeks.” Richie huffs and crosses his arms over his chest dramatically. 

“You just don’t appreciate the humor in repetition, Haystack!” he decrees at the precise moment that Beverly and Eddie make their way back to the table, each carrying lunch trays. “Eddie Spaghetti! I saved you a seat right next to me, baby,” he chimes as he nearly shoves Ben off the bench to make room for the other boy. Ben grumbles unintelligibly, but scoots closer to Beverly nonetheless.

“Not your baby, Tozier,” Eddie shoots back, deadpan, but he takes the seat offered to him anyway, and Richie beams brilliantly. 

“Not _yet,_ ” he corrects, wiggling his eyebrows at Eddie, who turns just as pink as his shirt under the other boy’s gaze. “Oh my god, _don’t_ do that — I can’t handle how cute you are, holy shit…”

“Beep beep, Richie,” Eddie stresses, sure his skin must be melting off due to how hot his cheeks are getting. “Cut it out…”

“Sorry, Spaghetti, but it’s true,” Richie insists. “I’m lost to you and your boyish good looks… Take me, I’m yours!” he sighs dramatically, leaping into Eddie’s lap, and the other boy catches him — _a reflex,_ Eddie tells himself as Richie settles comfortably in his arms, resting his cheek against Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie has to bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep from letting out a breathy sigh when he feels Richie turn to nuzzle his nose into the crook of his throat, but a slightly muffled noise does pass through Eddie’s lips just loud enough for Richie to quirk his brow at. “You okay in there, cutie?” he asks, tapping his fingertip against Eddie’s temple, and then his voice drops low, too low for anyone else to hear him as their chatter about after school plans builds, joining in the dull roar of the cafeteria around them, “You look a little worked up...” Richie whispers, kneading his fingertips into the nape of Eddie’s neck, and Eddie hates how he chases the feeling, leaning slightly into the other boy’s caress. 

“Fuck off, Tozier,” Eddie grits out after a moment, shoving him lightly, and he wants to fucking shout at his stupid hormonal body when butterflies seem to burst and take flight inside his stomach. He and Richie have been playing this sort of cat and mouse game for quite some time now - years, even - and Eddie sometimes wonders if it’ll ever amount to anything at all. Richie, on the other hand, can never let himself think that far in advance. The future is absolutely terrifying, although he will admit that a future with Eddie possibly by his side is significantly less terrifying, but who knows if he’ll ever pull his head out of his ass long enough to work on getting there? 

Eddie certainly doesn’t know when Richie is going to grow up, and though he’d die before admitting it to anyone, _especially_ the boy in question, he hopes Richie never grows up, that he never stops telling ridiculous jokes and pulling pranks and messing with him. He really, truly does. Now, if only he could say that out loud. 

But no - instead, he growls, “Get the fuck off my lap before you crush me with your ego…” and shoves Richie away. Push and pull. That’s them. Like the ebb and flow of a tide, ocean waves crashing against a shoreline but never lingering for long. 

Richie bounces back from Eddie’s jab like a boomerang, a brilliant smile on his face as he cries out to no one in particular, “ _Oof!_ Eds got off on a good one, fellas!” He rolls off the other boy’s thighs, landing once more in place between him and Bill, and then he jumps into the conversation like he had always been a part of it. Eddie shakes his head at the table, wishing he could understand even half of what goes on inside Richie Tozier’s mind, but somewhere deep inside of himself, he knows that if he ever really thought about if Richie means what he says to him, about him — well, Eddie thinks he might actually die. 

He looks out the corner of his eye at his friend and he grimaces. _Fuck_ , he thinks, _why couldn’t Richie be ugly? Why does he have to look like a motherfucking model? With his stupid curly hair and his stupid smirk and his stupid big hands that would probably feel so good wrapped around my —_

“Spaghetti!” Richie’s voice cuts through Eddie’s daydream like a blunt knife and the smaller boy blinks stupidly at the rest of the table for a moment, recollecting his thoughts from where they’d gallivanted off to — a world where he wants to fuck his best friend. _Jesus Christ_. “Knock knock, anybody home in there?” the jokester wonders, rapping his knuckles lightly against Eddie’s forehead and being sure to mess up his hair in the process. Eddie swats his hand away sharply and Richie’s eyes widen a bit. “Oooh, handsy. I like that, baby…” 

“Beep fucking beep, you asshole,” Eddie scoffs, looking away immediately. “What do you want?” 

“God, where do I start? First, I want to put my mouth on your —” Eddie slaps his hand over Richie’s mouth quickly, face white as Beverly doubles over with silent laughter and Stanley rolls his eyes. There really is nothing abnormal about this; in fact, if Eddie could fucking _relax_ , he would realize that this banter between them is downright casual, but Richie is looking at him over his fingers with something deep in his eyes that Eddie has never seen before, and it makes his heart thud loudly in his chest. 

“I meant what did you want as in _what were you asking me_ , you absolute fucking menace,” Eddie hisses slowly, still not moving his hand, and — _holy fucking shit_ , did Richie just kiss his palm? It was so soft, so chaste that he couldn’t be sure it even happened, but he pulls his hand away nonetheless. When he does, Richie is smiling at him softly. 

“I just wanted to know if you still wanted to work on our History project at my place later…” Eddie blushes down at his lunch tray, and he could kick himself for it, because going to Richie’s house shouldn’t be a big deal seeing as they’ve been friends since _kindergarten_. It’s a fairly new development, the thought of being alone in the other boy’s bedroom making Eddie feel like his legs are made of Jell-O, and he fucking hates it. But when he looks up again, Richie is still looking at him, brown eyes warm and comforting, waiting for a response. 

“Oh — yeah… Yeah, Rich, that’s fine…” Richie’s grin turns wily and he winks at Eddie, who feels his insides flutter again. _Fucking butterflies_ , he chastises himself. 

“Good - can’t wait…” 

— 

Eddie spends the rest of the school day thinking about Richie Tozier - which, honestly, isn’t all that special seeing as the other boy is in every single one of Eddie’s classes after lunch and _absolutely_ makes sure Eddie never forgets that. Richie sits directly behind Eddie in their English class and more times than Eddie cares to think about, he can feel the toe of Richie’s Doc Martens trail along his own calf. His breath hitches every time, and he grits out through pursed lips, _“Knock it off, Tozier,”_ hoping that Richie doesn’t hear the slight quiver in his voice. If he does, he never comments on it. 

In Chemistry, they share a table with Ben, who has more than once begged to switch seats (“I cannot take listening to Trashmouth sing _Burnin’ Love_ into a Bunsen burner microphone for a fourth time…” “You’re just jealous of my sweet moves, Hanscom!”). Eddie blushes from the tips of his ears all the way down his neck and he nudges Richie with his shoulder. 

“You really should be more careful, Richie - one of these days, you’re gonna set your hair on fire,” he warns, and he raises his hand to brush one of Richie’s curls out of where it has fallen into his line of sight. It bounces free from where Eddie attempts to tuck it behind Richie’s ear and lands right back at the center of the goggles he has to wear over his own glasses. Both boys laugh. “Unbelievable - even your hair doesn’t follow the rules…” Richie winks at him and Eddie feels his chest grow tight. _Jesus_.

“Are you two done eye-fucking over the test tubes?” Ben’s voice filters over to them, and Eddie wants to catapult himself straight into the sun. He glances quickly in Richie’s direction and finds him looking just as sheepish; his brow quirks. Interesting. “We’ve gotta finish this lab before the bell…” 

“Cool your jets, Haystack - we will!” Richie promises. 

They don’t. Not even close. And Eddie has to throw his hand between Richie and Ben to keep the latter from tearing his hide when the three of them are given a makeup assignment to hand in the following day. 

“You’re lucky Kaspbrak is here to save your skin, Tozier,” Ben insists in a low grumble, pouting as they all head towards the student parking-lot. Bill and Beverly are already piled into Stanley’s car, and when they catch sight of their friends walking towards them, Beverly pokes her head out of the rear window. 

“Shake a leg, Benny!” she shouts, pushing the door open as Ben finally reaches the car. “We gotta make it to the Denbrough’s to bring Georgie to soccer practice…” 

“Right, sorry,” he says. “I got caught up in Chem because Tozier fucking sucks,” he explains, and Stanley nods understandingly while Richie gasps. 

“I resent that!” he yells from where he’s still standing beside Eddie and trying to dig the keys to his truck out of his mess of a backpack. 

“Good!” Richie flips him off and the whole group of them chuckle as Stanley beeps the horn twice in goodbye. Eddie waves to them all as he backs out of the parking spot and once they are gone, he plunges his hand into Richie’s backpack and hooks his fingers around the lanyard that the other boy keeps his keys on and tugs it free. He dangles it in front of Richie’s stunned face triumphantly. 

“Marry me,” he sighs, and Eddie scoffs. 

“In your dreams, Tozier…” he shoots back, looking away because the way Richie is looking at him suddenly feels much too intense. 

“You have no idea, Eds…” he hears Richie whisper under his breath as he heads towards the truck, one of the last few vehicles in the parking-lot and certainly the oldest. 

The Tozier family doesn’t have a lot of money, and so everything Richie owns is second-hand; the truck had belonged to his mother’s brother, and he hadn’t exactly done a bang-up job keeping it in one piece, so it sort of looks like a bunch of different car parts found in some junkyard thrown onto a frame to make a truck. Because of this, Richie lovingly refers to it as Frankentruck, and despite his friends’ blatant distrust of the thing, he’s actually quite fond of it. If Eddie were to be honest, he is too. There’s something about it that is so inherently _Richie_ that he can’t find it in himself to not view it in the same light as his friend. 

Richie jimmies the key for a solid five minutes before finally managing to unlock the driver’s side, and he hoists himself up into the truck before leaning over the center console to unlock Eddie’s door manually. “Sorry, Eds,” he laments, “door handle’s fucked up on that side…” 

“The door’s the least of your worries in this thing,” the other boy insists. Sure, Eddie doesn’t hate Frankentruck -- but he’d never let Richie know that. There are a lot of things he doesn’t let Richie know about. The other boy sticks his tongue out at him and then makes a huge show of caressing the steering wheel. 

“He doesn’t mean that, baby,” he coos to the truck. “He loves you. He’s just jealous of what we have…” 

“Oh my fucking god,” Eddie shakes his head at the roof of the truck. “You’re impossible.” He reaches over to shove Richie’s shoulder gently, and Richie laughs as he bounces against the window, eyes crinkling up with the sheer force of his laughter. “Just drive, I don’t wanna be working on this project all night…” 

“Aww, Eddie baby, you’re making me feel like you don’t wanna spend time with me,” Richie pouts, sounding half-serious, and Eddie feels a small smile working at the corners of his mouth as his gaze drops to his lap. 

“No, I just don’t wanna hear it from my mother if I’m out too late,” he promises, and when he looks back up, he sees Richie frowning. 

“She forget that you’re seventeen or somethin’?” he wonders, and Eddie chuckles sadly. 

“You know how she is, Rich,” he answers back shortly, and Richie nods. “Can we please go?” 

“Yeah,” Richie nods, turning the key in the ignition, and Frankentruck roars to life -- a miraculous feat, as it usually takes three or four tries to get it going. “I’m sorry, Eds…” he adds after a few minutes of quiet driving, something Eddie normally would have noticed if he wasn’t wrapped up in residual thoughts about his mother and her prying -- Richie _never_ drives without the radio on. He feels tears well up in his eyes, touched immeasurably by this, the fact that for the first time since Eddie’s known Richie, he _chose_ silence. 

“S’not your fault,” the other boy shrugs, voice thick with emotion, and Richie reaches over to grab Eddie’s shoulder and squeeze it lightly. He wishes he could look over at him, but he’s sure that taking his eyes off the road would only heighten the anxiety Eddie is already feeling. 

“Doesn’t mean I can’t still be sorry,” he replies, and Eddie lays his own hand overtop of where Richie’s is still resting on his shoulder, brushing his finger lightly over the ring that Richie has worn on his thumb since the eighth grade. It was a gift from Beverly - a sterling silver band with seven stones in a curving line, each one of their friends’ birthstones. Eddie doesn’t think he’s seen Richie without it since that Christmas, and he still hails it as the greatest gift he’s ever received (“Aside from Spaghetti’s sweet, sweet lovin’…” “I literally can’t fucking stand you.”). He turns and takes in each of the stones -- there’s a garnet for Bill, an amethyst for Beverly, an aquamarine for Richie, a pearl for Ben, two rubies for Stanley and Mike, and a sapphire for himself. He thumbs at the stone a moment, spinning the band on Richie’s finger absentmindedly until he feels his breathing start to return to normal, and when he looks up again, it’s to find Richie smiling softly at the road. 

“You know you can always talk to me, Eddie - about anything. I mean that…” he insists, and Eddie smiles wetly, squeezing Richie’s fingers. 

“Yeah, I know…” he swears, and he brings Richie’s hand to his lips, kissing the other boy’s knuckles boldly, his touch feather-light. Richie stops breathing. “Thanks Rich… That - that means a lot to me.” 

_You mean a lot to me_ , Richie thinks, wishing he had the nerve to let that tumble from his lips as freely as his jokes do. But he doesn’t for fear of how Eddie will respond. He knows that he makes no effort to hide how he feels about Eddie, that he’s voiced his affection for the boy plainly for years, but somewhere down the line, Eddie must have decided that Richie is always joking. And so, Richie does just that - he jokes. He lets his admissions of love and lust land as punchlines instead, desperate to let them out but latching onto them at the last second, never letting go completely, always ready to reel them back in. 

“No sweat, Spaghetti,” he smiles, but it feels like a show. Eddie lets out his usual huff at the other boy’s favorite nickname for him. 

“How many times do I have to tell you to stop calling me that?” he begs, but there’s a softness in his eyes that makes Richie feel irrevocably warm. 

“Hmm… And just what would you ever do if I did stop?” he wonders, and his eyes flicker to Eddie’s face at last just as they pull into the Tozier driveway. Eddie is staring back at him, eyes burning. 

“I don’t know.” _And I never want to find out_. 


End file.
